In the wake of the September 11th attacks, the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and The Lancet published editorials offering conflicting advice to members of the medical community about how we should respond to the attacks. While the NEJM editors suggest that the ideal response is to provide patients affected by the attacks with excellent medical care, Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, argues that physicians must also respond to the broader social and political contexts that give rise to terrorism, war, and other forms of violence. It is commonly held that physician responsibility includes our obligation to both treat disease and to strive to prevent it from developing in the first place. In the following paper, I will argue that insofar as physicians, medical students, and other health professionals are capable of influencing the social and political determinants of health, we ought to advocate on behalf of our patients in the social and political sphere.